Information Cascade in Action

This is an old example (old by internet standards, its from Sept. 2008), but this is an almost textbook example of information cascades.

Here's the summary to give you some context: Somehow, an old article about United Airlines' six-years-past bankruptcy made it into a google index, somebody reads it without realizing the date, passes on the info, and UA stock catastrophically crashes, albeit briefly.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/ual_share_price_fiasco_analysis/

This article talks about the effects of information cascades on certain events or actions in life. On the third page (pg. 18), the article lists some events in the past that were influenced by cascades.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv26n4/v26n4-2.pdf

An interesting event that was influenced by cascades was the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash. The title of this event is self explanatory for the most part. A plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, and 230 people on board died. The government found no evidence of an explosion that occurred as a result of a missile, yet numerous witnesses said they saw this exact recollection happen. It makes you wonder whether there was actually an explosion, or even a terrorist attack. This occurs frequently in society: The government attempts to cover up the truth to keep fear out of the country and limit a revolt among the public. What happened was the government created the opinion around the nation that there was no terrorist attack that caused the crash. There are always some people who listen to the witnesses and think otherwise, but the common knowledge created by cascades is that the crash was not an explosion caused by terrorist. The effect of the government on the opinions and thoughts of the people in this country is definitely apparent, and other events can definitely be proven to have induced information cascades to affect public opinion.

Tyler Davidov wrote:...This occurs frequently in society: The government attempts to cover up the truth to keep fear out of the country and limit a revolt among the public. What happened was the government created the opinion around the nation that there was no terrorist attack that caused the crash. There are always some people who listen to the witnesses and think otherwise, but the common knowledge created by cascades is that the crash was not an explosion caused by terrorist. The effect of the government on the opinions and thoughts of the people in this country is definitely apparent, and other events can definitely be proven to have induced information cascades to affect public opinion.

Let me preface this by saying that I have no intention of getting into a flame war on this forum.

May I remind you that information cascades are fragile? Widescale cover-ups require a certain degree of tight-lippedness not possible to obtain from a group of people so large. If a single person involved in the investigation (there are dozens, if not hundreds, of such people) blabbed about the cover-up, it falls apart.

Ask yourself, how many large-scale federal cover-ups have ever been exposed, definitively? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any. Probably because they don't happen, due to it being impossible to construct one.